


reach for the speech

by ennaih (aquandrian)



Series: Death Trooper AU [7]
Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: 5 Times, Death Trooper AU, Established Relationship, F/M, Fluff, Mon Mothma makes an appearance, accidental feelings, and some angst, and then they REALLY wanted it, battle violence, because i wanted it damnit, but increasingly rapturous romanticism, but only in one section, the sword is back
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-24
Updated: 2016-07-24
Packaged: 2018-07-26 10:15:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 5,357
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7570261
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aquandrian/pseuds/ennaih
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Five times they said "I love you." And the one time they didn't.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. One

**Author's Note:**

> Title from _Water's Edge_ by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds.

They’ve been fucking now for about three months. Always in his residential quarters because the Director must be discreet at all times. It took them about a week to actually make it to the bed. She has some very fond memories of the wall beside the entry panel, a few more of the Old Republic rug in the living area, and one particularly good occasion over the back of the couch. 

When they did eventually make it to the bed, she would leave almost immediately after and he’d never stop her. It suited both of them, still unnerved by the intensity of this thing that has flared between them, unnerved by such an upheaval of hierarchy, still uncertain as to whether it diminished both of them. 

Then one night she fell asleep afterwards, exhausted from a mission, and woke a few hours later to find his arm draped over her, his face buried in the side of her neck. She should have panicked and pushed at the weight of him, she should have felt trapped. Instead, she had touched the fine silver strands of his hair glimmering in the diffused shadows of the room, finding she liked the warmth of his sleeping breath on her skin, and she had closed her eyes again. When she next woke to the alarm, he was already out of bed. They didn’t speak of it. She loved the fact that she could smell him, the faint deep scent of his bed, on her for the rest of the day. The next time his arm fell heavy across her waist, she pretended to be asleep already. He pretended not to notice.

That was two weeks ago. Tonight when their breathing slows after the thunder and violence of orgasm, she finds herself disappointed when he leaves the rumpled bed. She should get up and start gathering up her scattered clothes but she can’t be bothered just yet. So she lies there in the dark grey sheets all warm and disarrayed by their fucking, and watches as he moves across the room, a naked beautiful man marked by her mouth and blunt nails, his hair disarrayed by their urgency. He is not hers but she’s starting to think that maybe she wants him to be. It’s a ridiculous dangerous thought but maybe, just maybe.

He goes into the ‘fresher and she hears when the sonic shower begins. In his bed, she still feels him all over her, pleasantly bruised by his hands, her mouth still tasting of him, the sated space he’s left up inside her. And there he is washing her off him. It’s a stupid maudlin thought, one she pushes away as soon as she realises. But still she does nothing more than turn on her side, chewing on a fingernail as she stares at his clothes strewn across hers on the floor. Everything in here is opposite to what they are outside. Outside she is silent and menacing, a weapon to be deployed. In here, she is all moans and carnal demands, joyfully yielding when she wants to be and just as joyfully domineering when he wants it. The contrast bothers her, something wrong, something unarticulated.

When he comes out of the ‘fresher, pushing his hair back, she’s startled into remembering she should have left already. Awkward in the silence, she stumbles out of bed and reaches for her trousers. Her underwear is nowhere to be seen, good god where did it go? 

“Lights five per cent.”

As the room dims, she glances back at him. He’s sitting on the far side of the bed, his smooth freckled back to her as he reaches for the alarm console. And as if he feels her gaze on him, his fingers curl in, his arm still outstretched, a slender strong shape in the soft air, a sort of pause about him. There’s something. Something’s happening.

He takes in a breath and says without looking at her, his voice level and just a little strange: “Will you stay?”


	2. Two

“There’s a word for this,” the Director says silkily. “I believe it’s ransom.”

Mon Mothma doesn’t glare. Ever serene, she replies, “I prefer negotiation.”

His mouth curls, perfectly scornful. The Director of the Imperial Army, flanked by normal Stormtroopers for this one appalling occasion, seems untroubled by the fact that the Rebellion has, by a remarkable feat of bribery and distraction, managed to capture his Death Troopers and is now demanding he release several rebel prisoners in exchange for their safe return.

Jyn Erso, stripped of her armour, knows damned well the Director does not believe in prisoner exchange. She, along with the other equally unprotected Death Troopers, is entirely expendable, just one more weapon in the Imperial arsenal. It’s far more likely that the Director in turning up to this ludicrous meeting on neutral ground is either exercising a whimsy to meet the Rebellion generals face to face, or has some strategic reason to be right here right now. Maybe he wants the planet, maybe he wants to make some point of principle. She can see the same paranoia gripping her captors ringed around this dismal excuse for a town square. They know enough to be afraid. So they bloody should be. She just wishes she wasn’t just as afraid for him. 

The weak sun gleams the folds of the clean white duster as the Director adjusts his gloves and listens politely to the Chancellor’s terms of negotiation. His custom blaster drags his belt down just a little on one side, and the sword in its scabbard is a precise wicked line in white fabric. He doesn’t touch either and merely listens.

The Chancellor wants an awful lot of things. 

Jyn simply wants a blaster in her hands.

When Mon Mothma finishes, her mouth prim and hands folded, the Director gives her a tiny smile. “D’you know, the smug mask of virtue triumphant can be almost as horrible as the face of wickedness revealed.”

A moment of disbelieving silence and he adds, “I read that somewhere.”

“Does that mean you agree?” Mon Mothma says, displaying a distinct lack of humour. “We know the Death Troopers are valuable to you. We’re willing to let you have them back, these weapons you use against us. We’re willing to let them come back to you.”

His mouth is curving again, a cold deep amusement in the blue grey eyes as he lets his gaze move from the rebel Chancellor to the Death Troopers arranged behind her, all looking far too human in their clothes with hands bound before them. Jyn finds herself mentally screaming at him to not look at her, to not betray anything. He wouldn’t leave himself that vulnerable but he’s here, isn’t he? He’s already left himself open by turning up like this instead of just letting the Troopers fend for themselves and manipulate the soft emotions of the rebels. 

The Director looks past everyone and looks long and unsmiling at Jyn Erso, his personal Death Trooper. The other side doesn’t know that but now she’s fearful that maybe they do, maybe they’ll find out. 

Maybe she was the target all along.

Blue grey eyes deep and beautiful and utterly utterly cold. He looks at her, all the machinery of his mind moving swift and hard. And she finds herself remembering every damned moment in his bed, in his arms, devouring his mouth and the heat of his breath. He’s perfectly shaven now but she’s remembering when he let her do it for him, when he stood between her thighs in the coolness of the ‘fresher, his eyes laughing and lovely, and his skin so tender beneath her blade.

She’s never going to see that laugh again. It’s like a tearing thing in her chest.

“Do you agree?” the Chancellor asks, her voice just a little sharp. And the Director looks at the rest of the Death Troopers, one by one. Jyn feels a sort of current run through them, like his will has connected them all. They are the weapons he wields, Mon Mothma had that right. And now the Director twitches his cape slightly back, a movement only Jyn and the Troopers catch because they know it. A sign of readiness, of havoc about to be unleashed, of blasterfire and swordslash.

The Director of the Imperial Army, who never ever agrees to prisoner exchanges, looks the Rebellion Chancellor right in the eye and says one word.

“No.”

Mon Mothma is the only rebel who makes it out alive.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, that's Pratchett he quoted. My favourite line from _Carpe Jugulum_.


	3. Three

When medbay clears them, the Death Troopers are summoned to the Director’s office. He stands up and comes out from behind his desk when they file in, unarmoured and bandaged up in various minor ways. He nods at them, calm and just concerned enough. There is information to be conveyed, details of the rebel base and of the personnel, things he can use in the war the Empire wages, things he can use in his own private agenda. So he leans against the desk and listens intently as the other three tell him what they saw and heard, what they gleaned from that short period of captivity.

Jyn says nothing, feeling very much a small frightened girl in a big chair. She knows she’s not, she knows there’s so much training and power within her, so much skill to be called on when needed. But right now it all seems unsteady and inaccessible. She hadn’t been hurt, a few abrasions and a slightly sprained wrist from the skirmish that freed them. And naturally the rebels were too saintly to ever harm them as prisoners. 

But she can’t shake this sense of terror, of too much vulnerability. For a long while, she doesn’t even look at the Director as he talks to the other Death Troopers. She hunches in her chair, cradling her aching wrist, and stares at the smooth pile of the rug below the desk. She’s angry, she’s scared, and she knows she shouldn’t be but it doesn’t go away, it just doesn’t.

He’s using a modified version of his official voice, low and confident and reassuring, all the vowels properly rounded. She listens to it and remembers. 

How everything changed in that split second when he tore the world apart with his cape flaring back and the sword whipping out of the scabbard, vicious sharp like the lines and contours of his face. He had advanced, blue eyes burning, flanked by Stormtroopers and the other Death Troopers darting forward, and Mon Mothma had stumbled back, composure shaken. And then it had been chaos of so much physicality, Jyn fighting with her bound hands, smashing them against the faces and arms of the panicked rebels. She had fought to get to him, and he had cut down everyone between them, the silver hair swooping across his brow as the bloodied sword flashed through the air, hacking and slashing and ripping. She had seen the disembowelling upswing, the spray of blood in the air, the rebel body arcing in a parody of grace, and then the cross swing of the Director’s sword slicing head from body. As it fell to the dust between them, his burning blue gaze had found hers. 

She knew then. He would tear the galaxy apart to find her.

And now she sits in the chair, shaking a little because of so many things she can’t articulate to herself, let alone to him. Her wrist throbs, her head hurts, and her heart … oh god.

“That will be all,” the Director says, straightening up to Imperial correctness. He gives the Death Troopers a rare smile. “I am glad to have you restored to my side. You know you are always essential to the Empire. And to me.”

He never says thank you. He never needs to. The other Death Troopers leave, each trying to hide their own pleased reactions. Jyn remains in her chair, aware of how the silence changes when it’s just the two of them. This time it’s oddly tense, a whole new situation for them to negotiate their way through. She keeps her eyes on the side strut of the desk, her face set. She won’t be the one to speak first, to betray too much awful emotion.

He watches her in that strained silence for a few moments, and then moves carefully towards her. She sees the tips of his dark glossy boots enter her vision, the clean dark trousers and the lower portion of the white jacket. He’s changed clothes since they’ve returned. It’s like the fight never happened, that heartpounding panic and the blood and dust and the descending edge of that blade. She doesn’t know whether she hates that or -- she just doesn’t know, so much rawness choking her throat, so much turmoil in her head.

Now he’s standing before her, watching her face, and she still can’t bring herself to look at him. And maybe he’s struggling to say something too, maybe he’s irritated with her silence, maybe -- 

She glances up at his face automatically, seeking his mood. And that’s all they need. He grabs her free wrist, pulls her up, and suddenly she’s in his arms, clutching at him, sobbing at the solid heat of his familiar living body, sobbing into the notch of the white collar, holding onto him as hard as he’s holding her. His face is in her hair, his hands desperate and hard on her back, moving and grasping as if he needs the reassurance that she really is there. If he’s saying anything to her, she doesn’t hear through the roaring relief in her head. She only knows the glorious darkness of being in his arms, of being able to hold him to her, smelling him, feeling his heartbeat against her face, of claiming him back.

They hold each other for a very long while. And then never speak of it.


	4. Four

“It’s absurd.”

“No, it bloody isn’t,” Jyn snaps. “I am part of the team -- ”

“And they are perfectly capable of --”

“A team,” she repeats loudly. “You can’t have a team with one person not there. I’m going, you can’t stop me.”

“I bloody well can,” he snarls, losing the Coruscanti accent. “You forget who I fucking am. If I say you stay here -- ”

“Fuck off, I’m not your dog!”

“Actually I think you’ll find --”

“Don’t you even complete that sentence, I swear I will ram this piece down your throat.”

They’re supposed to be playing a game of dejarik but of course they’re arguing about the latest mission he won’t let her go on. It’s idiotic and she’s utterly sick of this argument they keep having.

Now he makes a scornful sound and moves a piece. She glares at him across the board, hating how he lovely he looks sitting there with his hair all flopping across his brow, his shoulders freckled and bared by the grey tank top. He’s got his feet up on the long cushioned bench, and his ankles are crossed, the beautiful sculpted shape of them visible just beyond the rucked up cuffs of the soft grey pajama bottoms. She had to persuade him for days before he would let himself lounge around in pajamas. But now that he does, she sees how much of a difference it makes, how relaxed he is.

“Make your damned move.”

When he’s not being an arse. Remembering her irritation, Jyn moves her piece and glares at him. “That’s a stupid fucking move,” he informs her and proves it by claiming her piece.

“ ** _You’re_** a stupid fucking move,” she flings back, perfectly churlish. “Remember what happened the last time you went on a mission without me? Do you remember?”

Krennic shrugs, not so much insolent as elegantly contemptuous. “We procured a couple of very valuable specimens, I remember that. And this is completely different --”

“Yes, this time we know they’re dangerous and weaponised. They’re not some unevolved tribe you can just decimate with one blast. You’re taking so many squadrons, you take me too. My move.” She swipes one of his pieces and advances two places, slamming back in her seat with triumph.

Krennic wrinkles his nose with displeasure. “How the fuck did you do that?” he mutters, examining the board.

She chortles. “Maybe I’m a better tactician than you, Mr Director.”

“Or maybe you just got lucky --” He’s scowling at the game now.

“Watch it,” she warns, suddenly seeing the pattern. He hears the change in her tone and glances at her, slightly surprised.

“You know I’m good at what I do,” she says levelly. “Just because we’re -- ” she gestures between them “ -- doesn’t mean you have to fall into some stupid archaic stereotype of trying to protect me from everything. It doesn’t work like that. I don’t work like that.”

He watches her for a long thoughtful moment. “Is that what I’m doing?”

“I think so. I’m not some little hothouse flower, some coddled princess. You know that. Stop trying to treat me like one. We’re not like that.”

His expression flickers, something vulnerable and beautiful that she wants to know. “What then -- ” He stops himself and returns his attention to the board. In the silence, he nods to himself and moves a piece, and Jyn wonders what it was he didn’t ask.

“Very well.” He leans back against the cushioned seat, his face relaxed and gently humourous like he is in their private world. “Make your move.”

She does and wins the game. The mission is a success too.


	5. Five

He keeps trying to give her extravagant gifts. First it’s appallingly feminine things like gowns and dresses. She asks him if he’s lost his mind. Even if she did like them and want them, there is no opportunity to wear such fine pretty things. And she’s a bit insulted, really. Shouldn’t he be cleverer and more perceptive than that?

Then he tries to cultivate in her an appreciation of Old Republic luxury. He takes her to museums and lectures her on art and galactic cultural history. She makes a habit of wandering off and pretending to get lost. He finds and brings her little trinkets, gorgeous antique bracelets with jewels or cracked stones. She won’t admit she really likes those but again, she has no use for them. They’re not practical. She keeps them anyway, in a locked box in the Death Trooper quarters she hopes he doesn’t know about.

Finally he catches a clue and starts buying her weapons and tactical manuals. He arranges for a trip to a planet where a clan of warrior nuns live up in the mountains. The Director is ostensibly there to negotiate an arms deal with the governing body. Once Jyn satisfies herself that he’ll be perfectly safe in council rooms, she hikes up the mountains and spends a week learning techniques she’ll use in the coming missions. When she returns, exhausted but happy, Krennic asks mildly if she’d mind taking care of the assassin they captured while she was away. She’s so furious she kills the prisoner with her bare hands. In five seconds. That’s a new technique too.

A few systems on, the Director and his personal Death Trooper take the Imperial shuttle to coordinates unknown. Well, he knows them. She doesn’t. He says it’s a minor unscheduled stop, and she’s content to let him have his way. So he enters the coordinates and she pilots them there, vaguely curious but mostly happy to be in public without the armour, happy that it’s just the two of them for a little while. 

When they land, he’s changed into dark comfortable clothes and hiking boots, and tells her to do the same. She figures they’re probably going to some secret meeting place where he’s negotiating with some shady mercenaries or whatever. It’s immaterial to her. So she slips a knife into her boot and straps a small blaster and ammunition to her thigh. It’s not as if the great black shape of the Imperial shuttle wouldn’t have been noticed descending from the sky. May as well prepare for any possibility. 

They trek through the green forests of the planet for about half a day. It’s a pleasing exertion, the air damp and chill against her face. He’s not in a hurry, stopping to point out small plants and the occasional flower to her. She relaxes into him when he puts an arm around her as he talks about the ecosystem, glad for his warmth and the sound of his voice so much kinder and gently absurd than his Director tone. There’s poison and antidote, vegetable and odd little fruit in the undergrowth. He shows her a bunch of small red ripe berries, takes one to crush it gently against her lower lip. She watches the way his blue grey eyes soften on her face, the crinkles of tenderness at their corners, and she offers up her stained mouth for him. He holds her face delicately as he kisses her. 

The silver sun is descending as they climb a hill crowded with thick green trees. She knows they’re close to their destination from the way he has tensed. So when they emerge from the copse of trees, she’s already reaching for her blaster, scanning the little clearing for humans or xenos, for any kind of threat. There’s a little cottage set into the side of the hill, craggy white stone with a dark roof and a little chimney, a small blue door set into the front. It’s surrounded by what looks like an overgrown garden, the trees closer on the sides, sheltering, dropping dew on the white stone.

In the dusk, his hair glimmering with the remnants of diffused sun, Krennic turns to her and gives her a sort of sweet uncertain smile she’s never seen from him before. She stares at him and then the small cottage, trying to reconcile the two. He doesn’t wait for her to speak but turns and trudges towards the blue door. 

There is no secret meeting, no shady negotiation. There is just this isolated green planet with its damp air and this little cottage. And just as he puts his hand on the door handle, she catches up to him and catches his elbow. Her eyes are wide and speaking as he turns his head to her. She puts both her hands on his face, framing his clear expressive eyes, trying to say in silence everything she can’t say, trying to say that she understands what he gives her here. His eyes soften, and she feels herself soften in response. She kisses him slow and sweet.


	6. Six

The secret mission is a success, all things considered. The plans for the Death Star have been delivered into the capable hands of a princess, the daring heroes martyred to the cause of true freedom. The Empire has been dealt a severe blow with the Director of the Imperial Army seen to be slain in a satisfactorily bloody manner, his body identified and burnt with no mourners, no memorial, all his vile plans consigned to oblivion. The galaxy breathes for one relieved moment before the next phase of the war kicks in. Jyn Erso is supposed to be hailed as a hero of the Rebellion, a pretty girl with blood in her hair and a father avenged, a name to pass into legend. 

She climbs the hill, her mind clear and empty like a life has fallen behind her. When she comes out of the trees in mid-afternoon, there’s a shaft of silver sunlight falling across the dark roof and old white stones of the cottage. She should feel something at the sight, maybe it’s an omen, maybe it’s homecoming. But she doesn’t stop, moving steadily through the neat garden towards the blue door. And then she thinks better of it, goes around the side of the house. Her pack is heavy on her back but she barely feels it anymore. Her leg aches with the damp, a reminder of the broken bone and the scar, but she’s walked through the discomfort. She’s come this far across the galaxy, through the crowds of well-meaning people, through the cities and planets, criss-crossing systems so whatever trail she leaves gets so mixed up and convoluted that maybe, hopefully it ceases to exist.

Now she rounds the corner of the cottage and comes to a stop, her world stilling into silver. The back garden is a precise array of plants within small stone borders. Green plants, small flowering shrubs, young vegetables raw on the vine. The dark trees hang over the edges of the garden, sunlight streaming through to touch the silver hair of the man crouched down at a row of tiny green stalks, his head bent as he ties a vine to a thin delicate stand.

She watches for a long surreal moment, sees the careful movements of his blunt hands, sees his shabby grey clothes, and the way the light glimmers the unruly tufts of his hair. She knows those hands, knows that careful light touch on her body, how reverent and how cruel they can be. She knows every crease and contour and freckle of his face, and now when he looks up and sees her, she doesn’t recognise him.

It’s a second of disorienting weirdness. He gets smoothly to his feet and steps over the row of plants, wiping his hands on his thin shirt. He’s looking at her like he feels the same strangeness.

“Hello,” she says, her voice suddenly scratchy.

His eyes crinkle up into that familiar colour, and she finally lets out that breath, something relaxing a little in her. “Come into the house,” he says, and his voice holds not a trace of the Imperial accent.

The inside of the cottage is subtly different to all the times she’s been there before. It’s so much more lived in now, warm with the hearth fire, warm with colours of woollen throws across the couch and chairs, with rag rugs on the stone floor. There are hanging plants at the curtained windows, Old Republic books and flimsies stacked on wooden shelves and side tables. She lets down her pack, looking hungrily around like every sight of every small thing is what she’s yearned for all these awful months. There’s the smell of stew, something bubbling low on the stove. He hasn’t said anything more, almost like he is now the old hermit of the forest, unused to company and conversation. She watches him take a battered ceramic bowl from the cupboard and ladle the stew into it, fragrant steam rising.

His hair is so much longer around his ears and on his neck, almost curls amid the straight bits, so much more silver than it is brown as though it’s been years rather than months. When he turns and brings the bowl to the worn wooden table, she looks at the lines on his face, sees how much more freckled he is now, his skin darker and weathered. He hasn’t met her eyes since that first moment, and her heart lurches a little at the realisation. There’s a small strange bird chirping at the window, not outside like she thought but inside, in a small cage with the door open. It’s blue and grey, that’s all she notices before she looks back at this man she’s crossed a galaxy to find again.

He brings a spoon to the bowl and sits down at the table, waits for her, watching where his hand lies on the scarred wood. She approaches, somehow wary now. Has he been broken by it all? Does she have to put him back together now?

The stew is thick and delicious, exactly what she needs after the long journey and the damp air. She eats in silence, grateful and still disquieted. But then at some point while she eats, he moves his hand quietly so the side of his little finger touches the side of hers. Jyn breathes in, suddenly wanting to cry, and carries on eating as she covers his hand with hers. Now they can’t look at each other but there is the sense that it’ll be all right.

When she’s done, she rises to put the bowl in the sink. He takes up her pack and she follows him to the room they had shared. There’s a different quilt on the wide soft bed and there are new small paintings on the walls that weren’t there before. Jyn sits down with the sudden breathstealing realisation of what he’s done. He’s made a home for them. And when he comes to stand before her, silent and watchful, she reaches out blindly to catch his hand, to tug him down onto the soft warm quilt with her.

It’s breathless and aching and a little too desperate, the way they make love for the first time in this new life. He touches her face with hands that shake a little, his mouth vulnerable and red, so much wonder and need in his beautiful eyes. She clings to him, overcome with how much she had missed him, how much she had needed him in all those months without this. And when he’s inside her, his forehead against hers, sharing breath and warmth in the silver afternoon light, she finds she is crying a little, something she thought she’d never do. He rubs her tears away, kisses them away, and moves in her, moves them together in a shared language that sparks back to life. She wraps her arms and legs around him, wildly happy, and arches up into him, responding to the joy in his bright eyes, to the open lovely curve of his mouth. Whatever was broken mends in the speaking of skin to skin, of breath and glance, of emotion unspoken.

Much later, she wakes to find him sleeping beside her, his face buried in the side of her neck, his arm heavy across her waist. The fire is crackling in the hearth a few rooms away, the sound clear in the evening peace. She eases his arm away to creep out of bed, gathering his thin grey shirt around her as she goes to check the fire. The sky is dark blue and sparkling with so many clear stars at their bedroom window. She stands there for a while, looking out and up, and thinking. 

As far as the galaxy is concerned, he doesn’t exist anymore. The Director of the Imperial Army has been eliminated, wiped from history. And she was never consequential enough to be missed, never mind all the platitudes of the Rebellion. It was a mission they had concocted between themselves, and now?

She senses him the moment before he slides his arms around her waist, relaxing back against the solid heat of him. Oh it makes her weak with pleasure and relief, the inescapable fact of him, and now she knows all over again how very lucky she is to have this, to have him.

He nuzzles her temple, his lips soft and questing at the tender skin beside her eye. Jyn Erso takes a breath in and says, “What happens now?”

The nameless man who holds her goes still for a long while. And then he kisses the side of her face, impossibly tender. “What do you want to happen?”

She’s looking at the vast dark sky, at the stars scattered like so much beautiful chaos. “I want us to be happy.” She turns in his arms, turns her back on the skies and stars. In the darkness of their room, the starlight catches the gleam of his eyes as he watches her with that same deep curiosity as always. “I love you, you know,” she tells him and her voice doesn’t shake.

He gazes at her, the tenderness of his smile a living warmth contained between them. And he isn’t glib, he isn’t ironic. He bends his head closer to hers and replies, “I love you.”

They’ll live happily ever after in their little cottage on the side of the hill, secret forever in a galaxy that leaves them in peace.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeah, that was meant to be an unconnected series of moments and maybe even in different AUs like the proper classic five times trope thing which I loved so freaking much and always wanted to write. But nooooooooo, narrative had to happen because I am so fucking linear and these two just went for the shameless love story and I was helpless to do anything but follow, writing and crying a little in that last bit because I am a goddamned sook as well.
> 
> I have a feeling I used headcanons that are not mine, especially with the gifts bit, but I can't find the posts now. Shout out if you recognise them as yours and I'll credit properly. That last section probably owes a lot to hollycomb's Children Wake Up Series because it was everything I wanted to read.
> 
> And no, this isn't the end of the series. I have more random moments to write in between. This just happened.
> 
> Don't look at me, I'm very emotional right now. *flaps hand*


End file.
